Women’s World Cup 2015 – Vancouver July 2-July 9
It has been quite a while since our last post. We haven’t been tracking down paintings, we’ve
just been enjoying life in Chicago, so not much to post about. At Christmas we promised our daughter and
granddaughters we would take them to Vancouver BC for the Women’s World
Cup. So Rae and three of the four
granddaughters (the 19 year old has a job, AND a boyfriend) came downtown to
stay overnight Wednesday so that we could leave Thursday morning. The trip from downtown to Midway airport is a
little easier than going to O’Hare, a much shorter El train ride.
The time change meant that we arrived in Seattle at 1:30 PM,
where we picked up our Chevy Suburban. This is a huge vehicle and a lot of fun to
park, but we needed something that would carry six people with luggage. We got to our downtown hotel around 2:30 PM, so
we had plenty of time to look around downtown Seattle. Our hotel was only a 15 minute walk to the
Space Needle, so that was our first stop.
The views of Seattle, Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier are spectacular, lots
of photo opportunities.
Friday morning we headed for Seattle’s Pike Market along the
waterfront. This is really tourist
central. Pike Market was originally
Seattle’s whole sale food market, and some of that still goes on. But now it is mostly souvenir stores. We had to go to the Gum Wall, and it is as
disgusting as it sounds and looks in the photos. We also got a photo in front of the first
Starbucks. There are many, many coffee
shops in Seattle. After a little sightseeing
we set off for Vancouver BC. It was
about a three hour drive, plus another one hour wait to cross at the border.
Once again Sue got us a great hotel suite in downtown
Vancouver. We were within walking
distance of just about everything, i.e. the stadium and the Vancouver Art Gallery. We took a bus to the beach so the girls could
go swimming. It was a huge park and
beach and they were in the water for a couple of hours. I didn’t want to get sand in my shoes, so no
close up photos of them swimming.
Saturday the girls went back to the beach and Sue and I went
out to see if we could find some tee-shirts for the game. Long story short, we only found one shirt for
Sue. The Canadians don’t appreciate
Americans need for tee-shirts and souvenirs.
As we approached the stadium there was a very long line leading to a
small Official Fan Shop that we thought was the entrance into a big shop inside
the stadium, but it wasn’t. So we walked
to the Official Fan Zone a couple of blocks away. It was the same story there, no
souvenirs. We asked one of the
attendants about souvenirs and she told us they were not allowed to sell
them. Once again Sue was ahead of the
game and had bought shirts for the girls in Chicago before we left.
Sunday morning Sue and I went out to visit Nancy and Royden our
Canadian friends we met on the hunt for the 1001 Paintings. They live about four hours east of
Vancouver. They just came back from New
York where Royden was exhibiting some of his work at a show. Rae went out to get face paint for the crew,
and you can see that the girls got their face paint on. The game started at 4:00 PM, and if you
watched any of the tournament on TV you would have noticed that the games
started right on the hour. So we went
early because what else were we going to do?
There was a lot of face paint and flags on the way to the stadium, I may
have been the only person without face paint.
Our seats were very high up along a goal line. But the height gave us a great view of the
entire field, and I don’t know if being closer is really necessary at a soccer
game. Friends of Rae’s was also at the
game so they connected by phone (how else?) and they came up to our seats. Their daughters were among the multitude that
had the face paint on.
Well if you don’t know by now the game was incredible! The USA scored four goals in the first 15
minutes!!! The stadium was crazy. I don’t think you’ll see four goals if you
watched two soccer games. And all of the
goals were at our end. The Japanese
eventually scored one goal in the first half, then both teams each scored one
more goal in the second half. But the
game was over after 15 minutes. We
stayed around for all the award ceremonies.
We then walked back to the hotel along with everyone else. Monday we had to be up early to get the girls
back to the airport in Seattle for a 2:20 PM flight back to Chicago. The trip went off without any problems and we
got the girls there around noon. Then
Sue and I were off to see Sue’s first college roommate in Skamokawa, WA. Kitty and her husband Don have a small Bed
& Breakfast about two hours west of Portland. We stayed with them about ten years ago. Don is a fantastic cook and he and Kitty run
cooking classes at the B&B. Don
Speranza is on Twitter at Don Speranza @CrippenCreekInn and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/don.speranza
where he posts photos and recipes if you’re interested. I put on about 3-5 pounds in the 3 ½ days we
were at the Inn, Sue of course ate like a mouse and may have lost weight. For our last meal we went out to a great
little restaurant on the beach in Ocean Park, WA. We left Thursday morning to get back to
Seattle because there was a painting on our 1001 Painting list at the Seattle
Art Museum. There are actually three at
the Museum, but only one was on display.
And in case you were wondering, we did go into Portland to visit the
Portland Art Museum even though they don’t have a painting on our list. We are not ALL about the 1001 list, we
actually do like art museums. The drive
from the B&B to our hotel in Seattle took about 3 hours, so we arrived in
time to check in. We went out to a
T-Mobile store to change Sue’s provider from to T-Mobile because her AT&T
contract was up today. T-Mobile provides
local service in Europe without having to change SIM cards and no contract is
required. After that it was off to the
Museum to see the painting “A Country Home” by Frederic Edwin Church which is
#548 of the 1001 list. I tried to make arrangements
to see the other two paintings on our list, but they are both manuscripts and
not on display very often, and I couldn’t arrange a special viewing. So perhaps will have to go back.
Our next stop was to the pizzeria Serious Pie & Biscuit
on Westlake Avenue. Rae’s hairdresser’s
brother (talk about six-degrees of separation) is a chef at this
restaurant. There are three of these
pizzerias in Seattle and they were started by a famous chef who has at least
four other highly rated restaurants in and around Seattle. Sue saw a pizza with Prosciutto, soft egg
& arugula that she was eager to try.
Well for me it was just ok, nothing to rave about. The restaurant shares space with a huge
Starbucks tasting room. Who knew you
could or would want to taste different coffees?
The next morning we were off to the airport where we
returned the USS Suburban to Hertz. You
don’t even want to know what that cost, but it was more than the airfare. We had a pleasant flight home, Sue and I were
able to complete the New York Times Friday crossword puzzle. After Jude’s wedding at the end of the month
we may look at going back out east to chase down more paintings, stay tuned.
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